Gaspar Noé on why his orgiastic Cannes sensation Climax should be shown to kids: 'It’s very educational'

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A woman soils herself on the dance floor, a young dancer wasted on drugs cuts herself, and a single mother locks her own young child in a store room so she can continue the party. Welcome to the world of Gaspar Noé, who's shocking the Croisette again with his latest filmClimax.

Previous career highlights have included a 9-minute rape scene in Irreversible - still the most infamous scene to have played at Cannes - and the 3D erotic movie, Love, which included a glasses breaking money shot. Through the course of his career Noe’s name has become synonymous with transgression.

He is also a director who leaves audiences in awe as well as shock because the violence and sexual action on screen is countered by incredible technically proficient filmmaking featuring darting camerawork, pulsing music and in Climax dancers voguing and krumping.

The cast is mostly made up of dancers who had never acted before. The only professional actor is The Mummy star Sofia Boutella who plays Selva, a choreographer who is putting together a troupe of dancers scheduled to tour America in 1996. “I chose 1996 because 96 sounds great, it is the opposite of 69,” says the French, Argentinian-born director. “69 is the collective possibility, 96 is the collective impossibility.”

It starts with a dancer wondering across snow before collapsing into the white stuff, followed by an amusing yet foreboding sequence featuring the dancers talking to camera. This plays out on an an old-fashioned TV set surrounded by videos including Pier Paolo Pasolini adaptation of Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom, Un Chien Andalou by Louis Bunuel and Dario Argento’s horror classic Suspiria.

Noe says he wanted to make a psychological drama that is the counterpoint to Stanley Kubrick’s 2001. “It’s like the start of 2001, we see the apes and then they evolve into humans, and in the case of my film it is like the humans go back to being apes. Humans are going back to their original forces.”

The startling change in the mood of the dancers on screen from energetically practicing their craft with camaraderie to becoming psychotic, neurotic beasts is triggered by the drinking of sangria with an unknown hallucinants.

“LSD or mainly alcohol can bring you back to a more reptilian way of thinking, you are not human anymore.” says Noé. “It is all about survival, about reproducing species, about sex and domination. The moment we start losing control of the logical brain we go to a psychotic way of thinking.”

And there is no director on the planet better at recreating the state of drug-induced psychosis than the 54-year-old. He insists that his movie is not in anyway a comment on hard drug. Indeed he sees alcohol as more dangerous.

Gaspar Noé Credit:
LOIC VENANCE

“Probably the most chaotic experiences I’ve had in my life have been with alcohol,” he says. “I’ve had many drug experiences but my worst experiences that I have is when people are out drunk. The movie doesn’t promote alcohol and it should be shown to kids who are 12 or 13 before they start partying. In that way it’s very educational.”

The thought of a 12-year-old watching a Gaspar Noé movie will repulse some, but the director believes that in the age of the Internet children can see far worse images on their phones. He doesn’t see violence on screen as too problematic because, “It is just a movie. Violence in real life is more shocking. When you see a guy smashing a bottle over someone’s head in a bar that is far scarier and shocking than anything you witness in a movie. When you are in a movie you know it’s all fake and sometimes as a director you have to push the limits a little bit to provoke an emotion.”

A scene from Climax

Climax came together very quickly. Noé was working on other projects when just before Christmas last year he went to a Voguing Ballroom. “I saw the energy and it was so crazy and joyful that I thought it would be something fun to shoot. I started watching music videos and went to Krumping nights and decided to do a film the Rainer Werner Fassbinder way, make it cheap and with a quick 15-day shoot.”

Noé - under the supervision of his regular Director of Photography Benoît Debie - operated the camera himself. “I’m so proud of that, I wanted to feel like another dancer. We saw the joy of the dancers moving and I wanted to replicate that with the camera moves.”

The result is a mesmeric film split into two halves. “The first part is like a roller coaster, the second like a ghost train.”

He wants to get to the heart of the human condition. “Humans are just like educated bonobos who have put on a nice dress. But at night they want to take off their dress.”